But just how much congressional Republicans are out-Tweeting the Democrats may be a bit of a surprise. According to a new study from the public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard, House Republicans have pecked away on Twitter more than five times more frequently than their Democratic counterparts — sending out 29,162 tweets all told through Jan. 3, compared to 5,503 for Democrats.

The disparity wasn’t quite as large over in the Senate, with the study’s author, Fleishman-Hillard’s Mark Senak, reporting that Republicans in that chamber dispatched 6,310 Tweets, while Democrats fired off 4,126. The study also found that about two-thirds of Congress’ 132 active Tweeters are Republicans.

The results of the study, which also analyzed the active Twitter feeds maintained by members of Congress during the first week of November, come with a caveat, according to Mr. Senak.

Many congressional Twitter users don’t follow others or reTweet items, Mr. Senak said in an interview. “It can be more like one-way communication, which is not really what Twitter was designed for,” he said. Mr. Senak, who writes a blog about the F.D.A., said curiosity about how lawmakers were discussing
health care was a major reason he started the Twitter study.

Some other nuggets from the study, which will be available online on Thursday morning:

* Senator John McCain of Arizona is one popular guy. In November, Mr. McCain, the 2008 Republican nominee for president, had a shade under 1.6 million followers on Twitter, according to the study. The other two dozen senators with active accounts had about 200,000 — combined. (Both of those numbers have obviously increased somewhat in the ensuing months, but the ratio remains roughly the same.)

* On the other hand, popularity might not be everything. The study reported that Mr. McCain was reTweeted, mentioned or cited less in other Twitter feeds than two other wellknown Senate Tweeters — Jim DeMint, the South Carolina Republican and Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Democrat.

* The Republican leadership in the House is both aggressive and popular on Twitter. The party’s top two members in the House — John A. Boehner of Ohio and Eric Cantor of Virginia, respectively — have the most followed Twitter accounts in the chamber.

* Mr. Boehner and the No. 3 Republican in the House, Mike Pence of Indiana, had also combined to send out more than 3,000 Tweets.

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